This email is doing the rounds at the moment – I’ve received it from a number of people (Liberals and non-Liberals alike). It speaks of a greater groundswell of negativity around Kevin Rudd and his useless Government.

SORRY KEV’S SORRY RECORD

1 Said Sorry several times.

2 Ratified Kyoto as it is about to expire without successor.

3 Organised “best and brightest summit” – if anything useful came out
of that, I missed it.

4 Set up “fuel watch”, a costly fiasco since abandoned.

5 Set up “grocery watch” another costly fiasco since abandoned.

6 Established the Australian Social Inclusion Board. This rarely heard
of bureaucracy was set up because “Every Australian should have an
opportunity to be a full participant in the life of the nation.
Unfortunately, too many Australians remain locked out of the benefits of
work, education, community engagement and access to basic services. This
social exclusion is a significant barrier to sustained prosperity and
restricts Australia’s future growth”. If there is any evidence to
support this argument it wasn’t included in the announcement. The Board
has been described as a “complete wank, …. the biggest waste of tax
dollars imaginable, towards some more Rudd-style feel-goodism”. That was
in May 2008. It probably did seem a big waste of tax dollars then, but
it’s been turned into a drop in the ocean by what’s happened since.

7 Set up the home insulation program – what a disaster! It was a
disaster because Rudd so wanted the Feds to be able to claim the credit
he gave it to his Dept of Environment. This feel-good department, whose
Minister’s previous experience was lead singer with a rock band, is full
of environmental scientists and climate change disciples with zero
experience in dealing with the real world or delivering real programs.
Four deaths, a minister demoted, (not sacked or had his salary reduced)
and $50 million to former union heavy Greg Combet to fix it, and Combet
says that may not be enough. And the claimed environmental benefits were
grossly exaggerated. Rudd said he took full responsibility but I don’t
what that means – he’s still PM, he’s still drawing his salary and
privileged superannuation benefits.

8 Set up SIHIP (Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure
Program). This program was initiated by a Memorandum of Understanding in
September 2007. In July 2009 the ABC (hardly a hot-bed of opposition to
the ALP) reported on its Lateline program that it was yet to build a
single house. That was despite $45.54 million of its $672 million budget
having been spent. A government report dated August 2009 said the
program was being criticised as: too slow to deliver; its governance was
overly bureaucratic; the program is too costly in terms of unit cost of
housing and administration. The revised program budget is still $672m
with each new house expected to cost $450,000 or $529,000 after
factoring in a proportion of administration costs and “contingencies”.
As at 1st February 2010, 2 of target 750 houses and 70 of 2,500
refurbishments had been completed.

9 Sent money direct to taxpayers and non-taxpayers to spend on large
screen imported TV’s to stimulate the economy and avoid the effects of
what Rudd and Swan called the worst depression since the 1930s. In fact
unemployment was 11% in 1991 and in 2009 didn’t get to 6%, which not too
many years ago would have been regarded as virtually full employment.
Remember Beattie’s target 5%? But if you can’t maintain your popularity
rating by sending money to voters what can you do?

10 Promised that every child in every school in Australia would get a
computer. This program is moving so slowly that most of the people who
were high school students at the time of the promise will have left
school before they see a new computer.

11 Set up the $70m green loans mess – people gave up their jobs, paid
$3,000 for qualifications and insurance to be trained as assessors, only
to find the demand for green loans had been grossly exaggerated, many
more assessors were trained than the program envisaged, and there was no
work for most of them. The Courier-Mail reported on 2 Feb 2010 that:
“The Federal Government predicted up to 200,000 homeowners would take up
the loans and only 1,000 have done so ….instead of training 1,500 to
2,000 well-qualified assessors the Government permitted a blow-out and
it is now estimated there will be up to 11,500 well-qualified
assessors”. The program has now been transferred to Penny Wong’s
department – that should fix it.

12 Turned a good budget surplus into such a huge debt that our
grandchildren will have so much trouble servicing it that our population
will have to increase rapidly. Blamed the GFC while steadfastly refusing
to give any credit to Howard or Costello for leaving them an excellent
budget position to work with.

13 Didn’t include any major infrastructure in the stimulus package
because the effects would be felt too slowly (except for duplicating
school halls and gyms).

14 Set up the home solar hot water initiative which was abruptly ended
three weeks early with eight hours notice. This caused chaos in the
industry, and many people intending to lodge applications missed out.
Peter Garrett blamed a cost blow-out from the original estimate of $150
million to $750 million a year for the cut-back.

15 Disbanded “Work Choices”. He had to do this because it was the
unions’ self-funded campaign against it that got him elected. Replaced
it by giving back powers to the unions and re-instating the Industrial
Relations Club. Set up Fair Work Australia with what seems to many as an
over-representation of people with union backgrounds.
16 Changed the previous government’s immigration laws so successfully
that the exponential blow-out in illegal boat arrivals created a need
for a lot more accommodation on Christmas Island.

17 Said “the science is in on climate change” and claimed the ETS would
fix it. Labelled sceptics as deniers.

18 Attempted to railroad the ETS through the Senate before Copenhagen
for no other reason than it would have allowed Rudd to strut the world
stage.

19 Went to Copenhagen taking 114 government free-loaders with him (one
of the largest of the 190 delegations), at huge cost to the Australian
taxpayer and the world’s environment. I haven’t seen any announcement of
the cost of the junket (and I doubt I ever will), but I’m sure that
whatever was going to be achieved, at least 100 of the free-loaders were
superfluous to requirements. And it was fairly predictable that nothing
would be achieved.

20 Refuses to debate the use of nuclear power generation to reduce
pollution because it’s against ALP and union policy.

21 Has opened 1 of 2,650 promised “trades training centres”, 1 of
260 promised child care centres in schools and TAFEs, and 2 of 31
promised GP Super Clinics.

22 Attracted 752 retired nurses back into the profession using a
return-to-work bonus. When they announced this scheme Labor hoped 7,750
would take up the offer.

23 Removed Labor’s original election 2007 promises from the ALP website.

24 Promised to take Japan to court on whaling, but now says that will
not be until November, probably after the election. As time goes on, I
find I’m becoming less convinced about who is really at fault here,
Japan for fishing in international waters, or the protestors for
disrupting a legitimate commercial operation.

25 Has so far kept the Henry tax review secret for political reasons.
Last week Rudd was saying it wouldn’t be released until after the
election. Wiser heads have since made him realise people won’t vote for
a new tax system when they don’t know what’s in it. And there must be
something nasty in it, either unpalatable to the voters or inconsistent
with ALP policy, or it would be heralded as another triumph for the Rudd
government.

[UPDATE]: It has since been released, and Rudd has ignored the
recommendations or simply invented new recommendations that are the
opposite of Henry’s.  For example, the Resources Super Tax, which has,
in the period of days, led to a massive decline in the Australian stock
markets, devaluation of the Australian dollar, and made Australia a far
less safe for people to do business. Most importantly, the Resources
Super Tax has meant that many hundreds of mining projects worth billions
of dollars have been shelved or stopped, costing Australian jobs and
export income.

26 Announced he will keep 30% of the state’s GST to fund 60% of their
hospital costs. The 60% funding will have strings attached. The states
have not been given any of the details, just the executive summary, and
he expects them to agree to the proposals without knowing what the
strings are, or what he might take back with the other hand under the
Henry tax review. The announcement doesn’t explain how it will improve
delivery of hospital services, but it will probably add another layer of
bureaucrats to the health system. Australia already has 450,000
bureaucrats looking after 290,000 health professionals. The announcement
was hurriedly made in March 2010 after it had been pointed out that he
had imposed a June 2009 deadline on himself for reform of the hospitals
system. Perhaps this explains the lack of details. Refer back to the
criticisms of SIHIP above. I think it’ll be deja vue all over again.
Rudd said if the states block his plan he will take it to a referendum,
which of course is just grandstanding.

27. Turned Gillard loose with $16.7 billion to give building
contractors, states and bureaucrats a feast in return for COLA.s and
unwanted libraries and gyms – the insulation racket all over again in
spades.

28 Last week he trotted out five senior ministers to criticise the
Senate for being “obstructionist”. The 5 were Jenny (SIHIP) Macklin,
Penny (ETS) Wong, Lindsay (clean nose) Tanner, Nicola (new hospital
system) Roxon, and Greg (Mr Fixit) Combet. I think Rudd is lucky the
Senate has been obstructionist because if it wasn’t he’d have more
failures to add to his already impressive list. I noticed Julia was too
smart to join the line-up of losers, and has managed not to be
associated with too many of the above “achievements” – actually lying
low while the schools building fiasco and criminal activities are
unfolding. But watch your back, Kevvy.

What makes things popular? Often, new stuff is popular, just because it’s new. It’s there – and it wasn’t there before. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better.

This thought struck me as I was walking up Bourke Street on the weekend. I walked past a razor shop, and saw a whole heap of brand new electric razors. All the latest bells and whistles in razor technology. Genuine improvement, genuinely better than the electric razors of two years ago. Two doors up the road was JB Hi-Fi, all of the latest and greatest in music, games, movies and technology. New stuff. But very little of it was an improvement. Some of it was simply slightly different, but newly released.

So, how do punters differentiate between the mass of existing ideas and products – they have a generic choice:

• Stuff that is better
• Stuff that is new

Thriller should be in the top album charts – always. As should Saturday Night Fever. Along with AC/DC’s Back in Black, and Whitney Houston’s The Bodyguard soundtrack. They are some of the best albums of all time – timeless classics, incredible artistry, superb songwriting and incredible production. However, they are nudged out by the newly released such as the utterly appalling Susan Boyle. It’s the same with films; Star Wars should be showing in cinemas all over the world these holidays, in the top selling DVDs, but instead we get Chipmunks – The Squeakquel. ¬†Sales charts are dominated by the newest releases, not the best.

Broadly speaking, companies with a strong focus on technology, research and development are good at making things better. For example, electric razors, microwaves, DVD players, iPods, computer software all get better with every iteration. Computer games are the perfect example (in stark contrast to other creative entertainment) where sequels are consistently better than the previous product.  They get better.  People are used to the new being better, because these companies train their customers to recognise that new = better.  They largely deliver on that promise.

Again, broadly speaking – movie sequels and follow up albums suck, but still find a level of popularity because they are new. Politicians struggle to convince voters that they have an ongoing bias for policy innovation – because they generally don’t do anything anything better, they do things that are new. When politicians do genuinely reform, where they do make things better – witness Australia over the past 15 years – it’s regarded as a rarity. ¬†Rudd isn’t a reformer’s arsehole, he isn’t making anything better, he’s just doing things that are new. The media’s love affair with him is because he is NEWsworthy. ¬†Restaurants don’t often do things better, they do things that are new. ¬†New dishes, new menus, new decor, new music.

Subjectivity does play a role here of course, so these organisations expend a massive amount of effort in convincing people that their new is better, even though it’s generally not. ¬†Politicians try and convince people that their new policy will lead them to a far better quality of life. ¬†The restaurants try and convince their diners that their new dishes are the best they’ve ever tasted. ¬†Movie distributors try to fill their trailers with quotes saying their show is “the funniest film ever”. ¬†Music companies rarely have releases that are better than things past, but they are just new, so they try in vain to prove that they are better: “Madonna’s best album yet”.¬†¬†They must convince people with all of their might that new = better.

So, why are things popular if they are only new Рnot better? why the hell do people fall for it?  Because these organisations make these new products remarkable.

Three types of remarkable:

• Remarkable: Different, incredible, reactionary, inspiring – genuine innovation
• Re-Markable: Provides people with a new way of looking at / using an existing product
• Remark-able: Worthy of remark and discussion due to an overwhelming story or point of interest

Some things have two of these qualities (Susan Boyle – fat ugly competition winner that you talk about with your friends, singing old songs in a new way), some have all three (iPod – amazingly innovative means of listening to music in a new way that you want to tell your friends about).

If you can be remarkable, you can rise above the vast back catalogues of human creation, rise above the better, and simply become the new – therefore implying a sense of better. ¬†Not to say that’s better, it’s simply remarkable. ¬†John Howard was no longer new. ¬†He was no longer delivering massive reforms, so it was difficult to claim he was making things any better than they were before. ¬†He lost because he was no longer meeting any of the criteria of being remarkable.

So which category do you or your organisation fall into?  New or Better?  Either?  What steps can you take to be both?

A wonderful piece from The Daily Reckoning, about former U.S. President Warren G. Harding.  Our current leaders could learn a thing or two from him.  My favourite passage:

Warren Harding may never have been the brightest bulb on the White House porch, but intuitively he understood that proper macro-economic policies were more the product of virtue than of genius. Debt led to trouble; thats all he needed to know.

Keynes came along a few years later. Keynes was a genius; everybody said so. And he had an answer for everything. Nature? Government could do better. Debt? Dont worry about it, he said. Why not just let capitalism sort itself out? Without government intervention, it will only get worse, said Keynes.

…does that not sound exactly like our own Kevin Rudd – who, being a complete control freak, thinks he can solve every problem through his own over inflated sense of genius? ¬†RuddBank, RuddTel, $300 billion dollar pink batt and portable classroom spending spree, now he thinks he can improve the architecture and planning of our own homes! ¬†Read on…

But Harding had already proved him wrong. Harding did the very opposite of what Keynes recommended. Instead of increasing government spending, he reduced it. He cut the budget almost in half. He slashed taxes too…and cut the national debt by a third.

Japan at the time struggled with the same downturn. But it had no Harding at the helm. Instead, its masters prefigured Keynes, trying to stay the correction using price controls and other interventions. The result was a long-drawn-out affair that lasted until 1927 and ended in a bank crisis. In America, meanwhile, by 1922 unemployment was back down to 6.7%. By 1923 it was down further – to 2.4%.

This lesson was entirely lost on the worlds economists. When the next crisis hit a decade later, they turned to Keynes. Of course, it turned out to be a moral world after all. They got what they deserved.

Read more here: Harding the Last American President to Deal Honestly With a Major Financial Crisis.